This novella came about because a bunch of my one offs had pretty much the same theme, and didn’t quite tell the whole story. On top of that, Spike’s behavior when shifted to the series Angel didn’t quite match his behavior in the Buffy series – becoming more comical, less intense, and losing a lot of the air of wisdom and insight he’d had. I could forgive some of it with the idea that Angel brought out the worst in him, but a lot of it just had me banging my head against the wall, and wishing they’d just let the poor character die nobly as he’d originally been written to. But I too am a hopeless romantic, and since it’s technically canon to think he did come back, I had to try and figure out what the hell was going on there, when the comic books, as far as I could follow, just went bat-mad and wandered everywhere, character consistency be damned. This novella is my attempt at making sense of it all.
Pretty Pretty Banner by myrabeth! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!
 
*new notation as of 2016: While I try to mostly keep all my stories (unless specifically stated otherwise) within my own version of what I view as canon, this story is a slight divergence. I wrote it expecting it to be my last story, and I have since come up with much better post Not-Fade-Away concepts. However, that doesn't diminish from what this story was when I wrote it, so I'm keeping it as it is, since my head-canon matters not a whit to anyone else. However, if you're trying to make a cohesive single-story out of my Spuffy writings, this story is an outlier, and I no longer include it personally.



Story starts at the end of Not Fade Away, Angel, series 5.

 

    The fight was amazing. The rain poured down, steaming in the heat of hell, as Spike whirled and battled like the demon he was. Oh, this was life, this was death, this was bloody poetry in motion. He snapped the neck of a demonic horse, twisted it full off, and then threw the still gnashing, sharp toothed head at another demon. He spared a second to scan the battle immediately surrounding him, and then grinned. “Ghoulie,” he said, snatching up an imp aiming a trident at his hip, “and beastie,” he whirled, knocking the imp against a red-eared hell hound that was worrying at the edge of his coat, “and midnight demon.” The hellhound was cricketed off into a worrying patch of darkness with glowing red eyes that was trying to sidle through reality and absorb bits of the world. Spike threw the imp after it, and ducked the resultant flash of flowing energy that tried to snatch him into the darkness of the failing demon. The black patch faded, but there were dozens more. Spike ducked his head down and dove into the nearest knot of creatures, bowling several of them sideways. He was totally vamped out, but there was no blood to drink here. There was only fire and darkness and metal-wielding flesh, under the occasional flash of lighting.

    The battle went on for what felt like hours. Spike didn’t know if he’d been injured – too busy to assess – but his arms and fists were aching, and he knew he’d lost his edge of speed. He planted the demonic spear he’d picked up in the nearest beastie, and looked around for more. Angel was somewhere behind him, the dragon he’d been fighting having dropped him half a street away from the main front of the battle. Illyria, or at least her power, could still be spotted occasionally – unless there was some other beastie in the battle who consistently threw out blue thunderbolts. He’d lost track of the others. Spike himself had just charged into the thickest knot of beasties and hoped for a good ride to the end. He hadn’t been disappointed. Everywhere he turned there was something else to fight.

    Thick demon ichor dripped down his front and made his fists sticky. There were sharp bristles imbedded in his skin from some furry worm creature he’d throttled. His face was spattered with his own blood, and he was pretty sure he’d earned himself another scar or two. He was tired. He wouldn’t be able to keep this up much longer, he knew. He wondered which demon it was out there who was about to have a real good day.

    The smell of human blood caught at his vamped senses, and he whirled. He saw nothing human in the mix at first, and then his eyes caught on a blinding light shining through the heavy rain. He wondered if some other hell creature had just arrived, and took a deep breath to make himself ready for the fray. He yanked a sword from the nearest battered demon, sliced its head off neatly, and then faced the new foe armed.

    The new foe took the form of a young woman, no more than twenty or so, with a bandolier of wooden stakes and a heavy looking battle axe. She had landed a good ten feet behind the blinding light, and Spike realized the light was from a helicopter, and the newest foe was in fact a slayer, who had just jumped from a descending ladder. With a broad grin and a war whoop, Spike went the opposite direction, unwilling to try and persuade a slayer in battle that he with his vamped brow and sharp fangs was really one of the good guys. He just set about clearing the area around her as much as possible, catching glimpses of other young women in amongst the fray. Someone, somewhere, had brought in reenforcements. The slayer army had arrived.

    He was backed up against a building when he saw her, leaping from the top of a tiny, newly risen volcano, her slayer’s battle scythe glinting in the red light. She was glorious, her blonde hair flowing around her head like a halo, her face alight with energy, her lithe form dancing in the sensuous ballet of death that had warmed his heart from the first day he saw her, and fired his soul from the second he had one. Oh, yes, he thought. Just one moment of this. She didn’t see him, but it didn’t matter. This was all he needed, all he would have asked for if anyone had offered. Just the briefest moment’s sight of her in the midst of epic battle.

    So it didn’t seem at all wrong that a demon the size of a mountain gorilla picked him up a second later and bent him backwards over its knee. The sound of it jarred through him as his lower spine was split, and he looked up at a behorned creature with teeth overflowing its mouth like an angry sea. The creature lifted him again, grabbed him by the head, and twisted.

    The last thought that fired through Spike’s mind was a pleasant one. That was a marvelous crunch.